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Review of the 11" MacBook Air

mattgemmell.com

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Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#51

Post by MikeW »

stcredzero wrote: post #7

My alternative: Put a 256GB Crucial RealSSD 300 in a 13" Macbook and max-out the RAM. It will be bigger and heavier, with less battery life, but if you already have a Macbook, this is a much cheaper move. The RealSSD has background garbage collection, so you don't have to worry about TRIM. You only need to do two things: 1) noatime and 2) make sure you're using less than 220GB. I did this, and the performance is fant…

Are you sure the Unibody Aluminum Macbook (Macbook 5,1) supports 6GB of RAM? I have this laptop and both the apple specs and crucial say it can only support 2x 2GB.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#52

Post by masklinn »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #48
masklinn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am going to start next week helping a friend's company do some back end Java EE 6 development and I'll either use my MacBook Pro or my beefy Ubuntu laptop for that. Why not use your Air? Expecting insufficient screen space?

Screen space is OK. However, I need to run NetBeans, web app, and DB 2. The 2 gigs of RAM is insufficient. I am happy keeping the Air for everything else and setting up the Pro for this one project.

Oh yeah, I can understand that. Why didn't you get the 4GB upgrade? I'd have thought of that one as a no-brainer.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#53

Post by masklinn »

MikeW wrote: post #51
stcredzero wrote: post #7

My alternative: Put a 256GB Crucial RealSSD 300 in a 13" Macbook and max-out the RAM. It will be bigger and heavier, with less battery life, but if you already have a Macbook, this is a much cheaper move. The RealSSD has background garbage collection, so you don't have to worry about TRIM. You only need to do two things: 1) noatime and 2) make sure you're using less than 220GB. I did this, and the performance is fant…

Are you sure the Unibody Aluminum Macbook (Macbook 5,1) supports 6GB of RAM? I have this laptop and both the apple specs and crucial say it can only support 2x 2GB.

> Are you sure the Unibody Aluminum Macbook (Macbook 5,1) supports 6GB of RAM

The hardware limit is (and has always been) 8GB, the original firmware limit was claimed at 4GB and there's apparently been a firmware update late 2009 (december 8th) which raised the EFI limit. At this point, claims become muddled, it seems you can put 8GB RAM in it but it only sees 6, unless you launch the 64b kernel (apparently)

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#54

Post by tchock23 »

I bought the 11" Air shortly after it came out as a fun little secondary notebook, and liked it so much I picked up the 13" as well for regular work purposes (replacing a 15" MBP).

I just finished coding an app on the 11" and it worked great. I never had a problem with the screen size or performance, and also have never had a problem with the apple logo showing through the display that another poster mentioned (on either the 11" or the 13"). I do occasionally hook it up to a 23" monitor when I need to do any design work, since there is a point where the 11" display is just too small for some tasks.

My only regret was going with the low-end 11" system. I really should have opted for the higher end 11", but didn't at the time because I was really buying it as "fun" purchase and the $999 entry price point was pretty attractive. If you're considering one, definitely spend the extra money to get the next step up.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#55

Post by zhyder »

danilocampos wrote: post #23

I killed my MacBook Air envy by buying a Core i5 MBP, replacing the optical drive with a 128 GB SSD, installing the system and applications to the SSD and symlinking everything big and rarely accessed (iPhoto library, movies, iTunes U, etc) to the HDD. I have AppleScripts that mount/unmount the rotational drive when needed, and my machine now screams . It's heavier, sure, but I don't travel much and I love having all…

That's a much more expensive system. If we configure them as:

Macbook Pro 15: $1800 + $250 for 128GB SSD

Macbook Air 13: $1300 + $100 for 4GB RAM

Both machines will have the same size SSD, RAM, and same number of pixels, but the MBP will be $650 more.

(I know there are other ways of configuring the two, like adding a $100 hi-res option to the MBP, or adding the $100 MCE OptiBay like you did. I ignored them for simplicity and to create a more apples-to-apples comparison.)

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#57

Post by PStamatiou »

zhyder wrote: post #55
danilocampos wrote: post #23

I killed my MacBook Air envy by buying a Core i5 MBP, replacing the optical drive with a 128 GB SSD, installing the system and applications to the SSD and symlinking everything big and rarely accessed (iPhoto library, movies, iTunes U, etc) to the HDD. I have AppleScripts that mount/unmount the rotational drive when needed, and my machine now screams . It's heavier, sure, but I don't travel much and I love having all…

That's a much more expensive system. If we configure them as: Macbook Pro 15: $1800 + $250 for 128GB SSD Macbook Air 13: $1300 + $100 for 4GB RAM Both machines will have the same size SSD, RAM, and same number of pixels, but the MBP will be $650 more. (I know there are other ways of configuring the two, like adding a $100 hi-res option to the MBP, or adding the $100 MCE OptiBay like you did. I ignored them for simpli…

Sigh, makes me regret my setup even more, price-wise. I have a big early adopter problem. First SSD was $680 for 80GB, it died, Intel sent me a second generation replacement. Then I purchased a second for $400, put them in my 17-inch MBP (older core 2 duo) in RAID 0 via an optibay. Then upgraded to 8GB of RAM when I started using redis locally. System screams but the SSDs are showing their age. I almost always run the drives close to maxed out storage. I used to have large volumes like iTunes on my Time Capsule but whenever I wanted to play a song it would take 10 seconds for the Time Capsule to spin up the drive.

http://paulstamatiou.com/ssd-raid-performance-9-months-later

I'm waiting until Lion comes out for any more hardware changes. Now that I'm using Jekyll locally (and will be just rsyncing the files) and it needs to regenerate 1000+ posts with layout etc changes, the core 2 duo is showing its age. And I have LSI disabled..

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#58

Post by smhinsey »

siglesias wrote: post #49

Is anybody else holding out for the 3G compatible Air?

I thought about it, but like with the iPad, I ended up not bothering with it. My thinking is that now that 4g is rolling out and the next thing is probably in the wings, it's better to use your phone as a wifi hub and connect that way. I just got a g2 and t-mobile makes no attempt to prevent you from doing this, at least as far as I can tell, and their 4g service is super fast so far.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#59

Post by danilocampos »

zhyder wrote: post #55
danilocampos wrote: post #23

I killed my MacBook Air envy by buying a Core i5 MBP, replacing the optical drive with a 128 GB SSD, installing the system and applications to the SSD and symlinking everything big and rarely accessed (iPhoto library, movies, iTunes U, etc) to the HDD. I have AppleScripts that mount/unmount the rotational drive when needed, and my machine now screams . It's heavier, sure, but I don't travel much and I love having all…

That's a much more expensive system. If we configure them as: Macbook Pro 15: $1800 + $250 for 128GB SSD Macbook Air 13: $1300 + $100 for 4GB RAM Both machines will have the same size SSD, RAM, and same number of pixels, but the MBP will be $650 more. (I know there are other ways of configuring the two, like adding a $100 hi-res option to the MBP, or adding the $100 MCE OptiBay like you did. I ignored them for simpli…

Oh, it surely is, but I'm paying a premium for two things:

Additional internal storage – very important if you want one and only one Mac.

Double the RAM ceiling - 8 GB on the MBP versus 4 on the Air. And the MBP is user-upgradable, which feels better to me.

You also get longer battery life with the Pro, but since I'm not usually that far from an outlet, it's not a big deal. I'm also happier to have an incrementally faster and later-generation processor, since that'll hopefully grant a further 6 to 18 months usable lifespan for the machine.

Re: Review of the 11" MacBook Air

#60

Post by stcredzero »

dedward wrote: post #32
stcredzero wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that OS X/HFS+ already optimizes for reusing already allocated blocks. This means that fast write-space is conserved as much as possible at the expense of larger commit-loads from the OS's RAM cache when writing to already allocated blocks. Also, what I've read seems to indicate that OS X behaves sub-optimally, but this is still good enough to support snappy behavior under normal workloads.

Not sure I follow.... the fast-write space in a non-TRIM device with GC is just some "extra" blocks (or whatever) that are kept aside and now and then swapped out for other in-use blocks (as far as the drive firmware is concerned - the OS has no idea this is going on) - and then the spare blocks are wiped for fast write again, then used when writes are requested. Really appreciate if you could shed any more light on…

OS X tries to avoid requesting "new" blocks for write. (AFAIK. Not an expert.)
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